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Sharing the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood, and the Human FamilyWed, 21 Feb 2018 16:49:17 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Battling Over Birth: Black Women And The Maternal Health Care Crisis – Part Threehttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-three/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-three/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 22:25:59 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21119This is part three of a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis. Part One: Prenatal Care Barriers Part Two: Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome Part Three: Midwifery Model of Care “Battling over Birth is a critical and timely […]

]]>This is part three of a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis.Please support our 20 year old, award-winning, nonprofit work to Share the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family.

Part Three: Midwifery Model of Care

“Battling over Birth is a critical and timely resource for understanding black women’s birthing experiences in the United States, a country where black women’s lives—and the lives they create—are at much greater risk of death and injury than those of non-black women … By distilling the common and diverse threads from over 100 black women, the BWBJ researchers have woven a multi-faceted tapestry that reflects what black women view as important and central to optimal birth experiences. Their recommendations for improving care and outcomes are grounded in black women’s authoritative knowledge. … This wonderful, important, necessary research by and for black women points in the direction that black women think we should go to ensure they have safe, healthy, and satisfying birth experiences and outcomes. We need to listen and act.”

Battling Over Birth: Black Women And The Maternal Health Care Crisis

Part Three

Midwifery Model of Care

In a context where ob-gyns provide both routine care for women experiencing normal, healthy pregnancies as well as specialist care for those experiencing complicated pregnancies, it is unsurprising that many of the women in the study reported that their prenatal visits with ob-gyns were hurried, pressuring and impersonal. In contrast to the U.S. maternal healthcare system, which is dominated by ob-gyns, many countries including Australia, the UK, Sweden and Norway rely on midwives to provide care for the majority of pregnancies. Ob-gyns are thus able to focus their energies on providing individualized care for the minority of cases in which pregnancy complications arise.

There is a long history of African American midwifery, dating back to the West African captives who brought traditional birthing knowledge to the Americas.23 These women became known as “granny midwives,” and they delivered the majority of babies in the South during slavery and post-emancipation. From the 1920s, white male physicians and politicians launched a campaign to move birth from the home into the hospital and to replace midwives with obstetricians. Granny midwives were the victims of a racist/sexist smear campaign that alleged that they were ignorant, unhygienic, superstitious and backwards.24 At first, only white middle-class women were wooed into the hospitals, but after the advent of Medicare, and the desegregation of hospitals in the 1950s, midwife-assisted home births were gradually eliminated in favor of medicalized birth for all women. Today, small numbers of black midwives walk in the footsteps of the granny midwives, offering home births. In addition, predominantly white CNMs staff hospital prenatal clinics and labor and delivery wards.25 However, many black people in the U.S. today believe that modern, safe birth is synonymous with physician-attended hospital birth and see midwifery either as the privilege of white women, or as a relic of an era when black people had no choice but to birth at home and were denied access to segregated hospitals even in cases of life-threatening pregnancy complications. This complex history shows up today in black women’s access to and attitudes toward midwifery care.

Our participants received prenatal care in a range of settings. These included clinic-based care in an ob-gyn or family practice, hospital-based care with an ob-gyn, ob-gyn/midwife mixed hospital clinics, clinic visits with a midwife, group prenatal care at a hospital and home visits with a midwife in anticipation of giving birth in a birthing center or at home. Twenty-three percent of our participants received their prenatal care exclusively with a midwife, or with a midwife-doula team. 15% received a combination of physician and midwifery care. In California, medical researchers estimate that 9-12 percent of pregnant individuals see a CNM.26 Nationwide, 87% see an ob-gyn. However, the proportion of pregnant people receiving care from a midwife, nurse practitioner or physician assistant has grown 48 percent in the past decade27

Characteristics of Midwifery Prenatal Care

Birthing While Black: An Interview With Midwife Jennie Joseph

A common theme among the participants’ stories was the sharp contrast between prenatal care provided by an ob-gyn and that provided by a midwife.28 Martha experienced midwifery care with a team of midwives from a birthing center after two earlier pregnancies during which she had received the standard short prenatal appointments with an ob-gyn. She compared the short, impersonal ob-gyn visits with the holistic, relational and intimate care she received from
the midwives:

The midwives were amazing. They asked all kinds of questions. Having had appointments with ob-gyns for most of my life that were 10, 5 or 10 minutes. When they asked me, “What do you envision for your birth, and what do you want to eat, and how can we help you and what things about your house do you want changed and who can help you?” It was like, “Oh you’re a friend.” Which was amazing. — Martha, home birth, vaginal birth

By referring to her midwife as a friend, Martha demonstrates the trust and rapport between them, characteristics that lead a pregnant individual to persist with prenatal care and follow the advice she receives from a medical professional. Samirah, who experienced parallel care with both an ob-gyn and a midwife, also noted the relational and intimate nature of her midwife visits. In addition, she revealed the lack of trust created in a hierarchical and inflexible approach to prenatal care. Rather than caring for her as a whole person, she perceived her ob-gyn care as geared toward preparing her for a highly medicalized birth:

My appointments were always so different, I would go to the hospital and it was very rigid, and you know, charting and preparing me for a C-section, you know it was always like WAH! Run out as fast as I could. And my midwife’s appointments were like on the couch and comfortable and you know, like talking about my day, always so different. — Samirah, 37, home birth, vaginal birth

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Samirah also appreciated the lack of pressure that she experienced with a midwife. Key to her satisfaction with her prenatal care was the midwife’s commitment to empowering her and her partner to make healthy, informed decisions for themselves. Dalia contrasted this with her ob-gyn who she felt treated her as a disobedient child whenever she disagreed with a proposed course of action:

We found a good midwife. I was not married to having the baby at home. I love that idea but if something goes wrong and we need to go to the hospital my concern is that I have a care provider who has a relationship and has some perspective on what I’m capable of to be my advocate in there. It was fantastic, it was totally different [with the midwife]. I had my appointments at home, I had my baby with me and had my husband there and spent an hour each time talking about whatever. Having things presented to us and choices. And not to feel like I was the rebel every time there was a recommendation, you should do this; your baby’s small at 37 weeks so now you should go have an ultrasound every day, a stress test every day. It was like I was disobeying her. So it was totally different having a midwife. Very relaxed. — Dalia, 40, home birth, vaginal birth

Many of the participants who were able to access midwifery care observed a difference in the philosophy of pregnancy care between ob-gyns and midwives. In their opinion, ob-gyns treated pregnancy like a medical problem or crisis, and tended to utilize numerous and unnecessary interventions that were not tailored to the specific health needs and cultural preferences of the pregnant individual. Participants believed that ob-gyns used fear to ensure compliance with medical advice. In contrast, midwives were more open to exploring alternative approaches to ensure that the pregnant person achieved and maintained optimal health. They used relationship building, trust and listening to build consensus rather than fear and coercion:

And I, that’s kind of the feeling I got, that her advice was based solely on fear. And that’s not usually how I make my decisions. My intuition kind of rose up and I was like, “this is a person who is going to treat my birth like a crisis” And I’m not ready to be in an emergency situation with my birth. I don’t want to feel that. So I walked out of there and I started Yelping “midwife.” — Brianna, 38, home birth, vaginal birth

I was going to [HMO name]; it was a very impersonal experience, that’s what turned me off from the hospital. I knew a hospital was only for an emergency… They wanted to do the diabetes screening and I didn’t feel it was necessary because of the way I took care of myself. I never did it. Every time I went she was like, you have to take it, this is really important. They have all this fear attached to it. They’re just pushing it on you and I’m like no I’m not doing it. And they would call and leave these messages like. We noticed that you didn’t do the test. So then they asked me, are you on prenatals. And I told them I’m not doing no vitamin [pill], I’m taking in this, and all that, I’m telling them about these herbs and vegetables and they asked where does it come from, they don’t know anything. So I called [black midwife’s name] and it was such as relief to have a midwife come to you in your environment and make it so comfortable for you so that you don’t even have to think too much, everything just flows. — Aliyah, 21, home birth, vaginal birth

How Racism Harms Pregnant Women – And What Can Help

Rather than focusing narrowly on the pregnant individual’s physical health condition, midwifery care is holistic, and recognizes that a person’s mental, emotional and social wellbeing are affected by and can impact their pregnancy.29 Our participants noted that their midwife helped them to work through difficult emotional or relationship issues that were affecting their emotional preparedness for birth. Amara switched from an ob-gyn practice to a midwife when she was eight months pregnant because she learned that her ob-gyn could quite likely not be present at her birth, and she did not believe in any case that her ob-gyn supported her vision of a natural birth. The emotional care that she received from her midwife was critically important in helping her to release childhood trauma that was triggered when she entered the hospital for childbirth classes:

My last three weeks of prenatal care was heavenly. I had no idea. I mean, the level of beautiful care I got from my midwife, which I should have had my whole pregnancy. Just going, like you said, to a beautiful space, which felt like a women’s center. She’d be like, oh take this stick and pee in the bathroom, honey. Look on the little chart and tell me what it says. It was all like, self-help, do it yourself. We would chat and I said it was a cross between going to visit my grandmother, a therapist, and maybe a nurse. She would talk to me and she was the first person who—I had gone to a birthing class at the hospital and I had had an emotional meltdown. I had been really upset afterwards and I didn’t know what it was about. I was talking to her three weeks before I was due, it became clear to me that I was given up. I was birthed but then my mother left me in the hospital.

What was coming up for me was all that body memory of babies in hospitals and being abandoned and all this kind of thing. I would have been an emotional wreck if I was trying to give birth in a hospital without realizing that was going on for me. So my midwife acted as my therapist and helped me to talk it through. She was this very kind of petite woman but she was very hardcore and she just said, “You’ve got to leave that behind. That’s not your birth story anymore. You’re having a new birth story.” It was just putting it on the table and sharing that was really powerful. By the time I got to my birth, which was a week later from the due date. It was four weeks later from moving to this midwife. I felt prepared emotionally. — Amara, 41, hospital, vaginal birth

Hailey found her midwife’s assistance in navigating a challenging relationship with the father of her unborn child essential to her emotional wellbeing during her last trimester. She also appreciated how the midwife worked to support and empower the partner or in this case ex-partner as well as the pregnant person.

I ended up finding my midwife when I was 30 weeks pregnant. She was amazing… She had a great team. They really took care of us from the prenatal part and she really helped with relationship issues, because we were broken up, “How do we put this together? Do we even want to proceed as a family? Or should we just be friends? What is his role going to be as a father?” But she made sure to include my husband in the entire process, and he felt empowered as well as I. — Hailey, 31, home birth, vaginal birth

This is a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis.

Part Three: Midwifery Model of Care

Join the LiberateBlackBirth Campaign!With the release of Battling Over Birth, Black Women Birthing Justice are launching a campaign to transform the maternal health-care system in California. Join us!! Together we can ensure that black women and pregnant individuals have the right to birth with safety and autonomy, where, how and with whom they choose.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-three/feed/0Battling Over Birth: Black Women And The Maternal Health Care Crisis – Part Twohttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-two/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-two/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 22:25:48 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21113This is part two of a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis. Part One: Prenatal Care Barriers Part Two: Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome Part Three: Midwifery Model of Care “Battling over Birth is a critical and timely […]

]]>This is part two of a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis.Please support our 20 year old, award-winning, nonprofit work to “Share the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family”

Part Two: Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome

“Battling over Birth is a critical and timely resource for understanding black women’s birthing experiences in the United States, a country where black women’s lives—and the lives they create—are at much greater risk of death and injury than those of non-black women … By distilling the common and diverse threads from over 100 black women, the BWBJ researchers have woven a multi-faceted tapestry that reflects what black women view as important and central to optimal birth experiences. Their recommendations for improving care and outcomes are grounded in black women’s authoritative knowledge. … This wonderful, important, necessary research by and for black women points in the direction that black women think we should go to ensure they have safe, healthy, and satisfying birth experiences and outcomes. We need to listen and act.”

Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis

Part Two

Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome

Chronic stress and psychological distress have numerous impacts on women’s health, including negatively affecting reproductive health. Researchers have found that stress and traumatic life events during pregnancy contribute to preterm birth (less than 37 weeks), and low birthweight. 14 Researchers have also investigated the impact of racism, including lifelong experiences of racism, chronic stress and posttraumatic stress disorder. Several studies suggest a complex relationship between lifetime exposure to racism, stress, trauma and prenatal depression that may trigger pregnancy complications.15

The participants in our study were very aware of the impact of stress on their wellbeing in general and on their pregnancies in specific. Participants identified four sources of significant stress in their lives: racism and environmental stress, economic and job related stress, parenting stress, relationship and intimate violence-related stress. For the women in our study, stress is not related to one stressful incident, such as the loss of a job or death in the family. Instead, their lives are marked by interlocking stress factors related to their multiple roles as workers, providers, homemakers, parents and elder caregivers. Malika articulates how navigating these multiple responsibilities in the context of a society structured by racism/sexism can lead to feelings of overwhelm and depression:

My husband didn’t have a job, I was working for this terrible, racist school, I was pregnant and not feeling well because I was so tired and I was working two jobs… I would fall asleep while driving. I would come home from work and fall asleep at 4 and not wake up ‘til the next day at 6 am… It was a very stressful pregnancy because not that long after my husband lost his job, he got a new job thankfully out here. He left and it was me and my older son, and my mom was sick. I was driving back and forth between Atlanta and Savannah, which is about 4 hours, to help her. She was going through chemo. It was just, like, my world was ending. It felt like my world was ending while I was pregnant. I cried a lot. I mean, I would just come home from work and get into bed and cry because my mother was dying and I was alone and we were going to lose our house and who cares about a house, but at that point it felt like we were—none of us comes from a lot so we felt like we were, I guess, upwardly mobile—we were going to have things for our kids that we never had. So, it just felt like our whole world, you know like I was losing my whole world. So I couldn’t even focus on my pregnancy. It was just a kind of another thing on the list of things that were stressful. — Malika, 33, hospital birth

Despite an end to formal residential segregation, continuing race and class barriers mean that black women are more likely to live in neighborhoods impacted by poverty, substandard housing and violence. This can lead to stressors related to the environment in which a pregnant individual lives:

It was such a hard year. My husband and I moved out of our home in Oakland that year. Because we had a stray bullet hit the house. It went through four walls and landed on our piano. And we come home looking at this bullet on the piano, thinking, we got children in this house. This is supposed to be our safe space, our home. We’d been burglarized two times so we moved from this big house to 800 square feet student housing. Four of us already and we wanted to add a fifth one. — Dalia, 40, home birth, vaginal birth

Birthing While Black: An Interview With Midwife Jennie Joseph

Since the 1980s, our welfare net for vulnerable women, families and communities has been eroded, while massive government funding has gone into a war on drugs that has pursued punishment rather than treatment as a strategy for addressing substance abuse, and the construction of a multi-billion dollar prison-industrial complex. Low-income black women are impacted by this shift in public spending in a number of ways: we pick up the caring labor for family members that the state no longer provides, we do healing work in families and communities shattered by drug use and gun violence, and we are disproportionately incarcerated for “survival crimes” such as welfare fraud, sex work and low-level drug sales. Dana’s tragic story speaks to the stress that this hostile environment can create for pregnant individuals:

I lost the baby. At two months. I went to the bathroom and went to pee and some chunks came out. And when I’m walking some more comes out in my panties. I just lost my father last year four days after my birthday… My brother was murdered in March. Shot 34 times so its like ALL of this. My sister just recently got out the hospital. She got a spinal infection that was going to her brain. The whole time she is going back and forth to work and the hospital thinking she’s having headaches and they just sending her back home. Next thing she knows she can’t get up and walk!… So ALL of this is last year… I went to jail over and over again last year. I just finished fighting my case the day before my birthday. — Dana

As workers and providers, black women have to navigate the work world during their pregnancies. Several of our participants described work as a site of considerable stress, in particular where they experienced racism and pregnancy-related discrimination. One participant shared a saga of job discrimination that started when she told her employer that her “high risk” pregnancy could require additional time off work:

Over 40 and the third pregnancy in a year, my doctor was watching me very closely. So I told my manager because I had to go to more appointments and a week after I told him I was pregnant, he demoted me. So he demoted me, I’m going to say three levels. I’m a project manager and he basically made me an admin assistant for my group. — Maha,40+, hospital, vaginal birth.

Join the LiberateBlackBirth Campaign! With the release of Battling Over Birth, Black Women Birthing Justice are launching a campaign to transform the maternal health-care system in California. Join us!! Together we can ensure that black women and pregnant individuals have the right to birth with safety and autonomy, where, how and with whom they choose.

Maha subsequently went on disability leave when she was two-and-a-half months pregnant, she returned to a hostile workplace where she was targeted with close monitoring and ultimately accepted a severance package to avoid further stress:

This is how it is. I’m a woman of color and this is just how it is and I’m just dealing with it. And I never really cried or got upset because I didn’t want to impact my baby. [baby gurgling][Sniffs] Sorry. But if I think about it now, and its been six weeks now. I think its now that I can actually have these emotions because I was just like, the whole time, I’m not going to let this bother me. I’m going to have my baby. So I was discriminated against quite a bit during my pregnancy. — Maha, 40+, hospital, vaginal birth.

Relationships with partners and parents were also sources of significant stress in the lives of some of our participants. Several women reported experiencing intimate partner violence and sexual abuse during their pregnancies. For one participant, the domestic violence she was living in was a factor in choosing to terminate a pregnancy, however after inadvertently getting pregnant again, she felt unable to leave her abusive husband:

I had an abortion. My ex-husband was really— As soon as we got married his temper just increased. And the idea- I just kept picturing being pregnant and being thrown down the stairs or being slapped or just I couldn’t imagine being pregnant and bringing another child in and so I got an abortion. And right when I was getting a divorce, well we were talking about getting a divorce, I found out I was pregnant, so we stayed… — Kaela, 31, hospital, vaginal birth

Our sexual intimacy was very violent and he would like hold pillows over [my face] and it was just like really, really messed up. And so that was like a very depressing–I just kind of like went into another place, just tell myself just to survive because I didn’t have anywhere else to go because, you know, I had already broken my family’s heart because you know, I changed everything, you know. Just a little bit of background of how I was raised in the church, I just didn’t know how to survive in the world, and so even when I got pregnant with her, I just left my job. I didn’t know anything about leave of absence. I didn’t know anything about pregnancy leave. I just left. I was just like “Oh well I done did it. I done messed it all up.’’ And I just went into this other place just to survive and so he was the only person that I could depend on, so I just had to deal with it, you know? — Sage, 36, hospital, vaginal birth

Birth In America For Black Mothers – A Documentary “the AMERICAN dream”

The women in our study who experienced violence from an intimate partner had very few choices in dealing with the violence in their lives. None of the women reported knowing about support services or resources for black women living with intimate violence, and reporting the violence to the authorities (police or medical professionals) was not considered a safe option.16 As Dana shares:

I’m like, “What you trying to say? That this ain’t your baby? Cause you’re the only I’ve slept with you know and all this.” Next thing you know and I’m you know just do whatever you gotta do. He watching me. Do whatever you gotta do. Bop. [Punches her fist] Knocks me. [All gasp]. He knocks me to the ground. So I just–I tumble. I didn’t know what I looked like. I get up. I check to make sure all my teeth was there. I wasn’t going to look up without no teeth so I’m like all right. I don’t realize this was all swollen [gesturing to face]. It was close to my nose, which affected all of this. So all of this was all like two black eyes, bruises all over my cheeks. But I don’t know this though… So I am going from my mom’s house to my adoptive parents’… I got there and realized–Yeah. They’re like, “You gotta check the baby and make sure the baby is okay. You fell pretty hard and stuff like that.” And I’m just like, “No.” Cause I didn’t even want to face the fact if something is wrong. So I didn’t go to the doctor. — Dana

An important mitigating factor in assessing the impact of stress is the amount of support that a pregnant person receives in her social environment. Many of our participants reported that they found it difficult to ask for help, and believed that they should be able to handle things on their own. This belief can be traced to the “Black Superwoman” or “Strong Black Woman” syndrome.17 Abrams et al define the “Strong Black Woman” as a socialized and internalized cultural gender schema with the following characteristics: “a provider and caretaker who is resistant to vulnerability or dependency, displays strength, suppresses emotions, succeeds despite inadequate resources, and assumes responsibility as a community agent.”18 Rosario clearly articulated her adherence to the SBW schema:

Other races be killing themselves over stuff. We’re strong people, we’re not gonna kill ourselves cause a man wants to leave us. And we have to raise our kid on our own. We just really strong.And we get it done. — Rosario, 20, hospital, vaginal birth

While strength is an important attribute in navigating racism/sexism and economic injustice, and at the time supporting family members and maintaining community responsibilities, the need to be strong at all times can also lead to depression, isolation and self-judgment, as well as unhealthy coping/stuffing strategies. The Sharing Circles that we conducted for this research were a space in which women often felt their feelings about difficult or traumatic experiences for the first time, and found a supportive space where their pain could be held and honored:

Three weeks prior to my birth, I had buried my mother. [Tearfully] I wasn’t supposed to cry… I was working fulltime. And I was looking for a house and I was painting my bathroom, and I was trying to be superwoman. Everything I taught my clients not to be. And I have sisters and I have support and I still have not learned to ask for help. I was trying to be strong for my dad, because this was his life partner of almost 50 years. And although I was the youngest, I’m the one that took care of my mom and I didn’t want my dad to join her, so I didn’t cry when we buried my mom. I delivered the obituary. I didn’t cry because I didn’t want my father to fall apart. And I didn’t realize I was grieving during my labor. — Amina, 42, hospital, unplanned cesarean

Given the significant stressors and lack of support in their lives, some of our participants terminated or considered terminating an unplanned pregnancy. Other women looked for ways to bring as much self-care and calm into their lives as possible. For many of our participants, their spiritual practice or belief in a Higher Power and/or ancestors provided them with a source of strength, peace and guidance.

There was so much anxiety throughout the pregnancy, so much stress, and I think the birthing process also reflected that stress. But there was a lot of luck, or divination. The Creator looking out, ancestors looking out for us in the process too. — Dalia, 40, home birth, vaginal birth

I did the Hypnobabies program. I don’t know if anybody’s heard of it. It’s really just like self-guided meditation. They say it’s hypnosis, but if you are familiar with meditating, it’s like a woman guiding you through a deep meditation and giving you positive affirmations the entire time. You kind of get the idea… You just put yourself in a deep relaxation. And I think that is also–It’s when I started doing that that I kind of like let go. Like all of those anxieties about being pregnant, having a baby, and it not being the right time and all of that just kind of dissipated because I was able to ground myself. — Tyra, 26, hospital, vaginal birth

For other women, the knowledge that they could create a safe space for their child’s birth and first year was a source of inspiration:

I wanted a birth that was quiet, because everything was so chaotic outside of—inside my body I felt very calm, but outside my body it was very chaotic. So because I felt like God had given me this gift, that he was… not going to make it more difficult than I could handle. I wanted it, I wanted my son to be born into peace. — Joanna, 32, birth center, vaginal birth

Black women experience multiple stressors during pregnancy, including adverse life events that are caused or exacerbated by structural and interpersonal racial/sexual discrimination and violence. Black women’s strength and ability to survive and navigate these stressors is a considerable asset. However, the “Strong Black Woman” syndrome can also be detrimental, where it prevents us from honoring our feelings or seeking or accepting help. Accessible, culturally-humble prenatal services for pregnant black women should address women’s barriers to seeking help. They should also include referrals for counseling and practical assistance for dealing with intimate partner violence, parenting challenges, racial/sexual discrimination in the workplace, finding adequate housing, and dealing with trauma and loss.

Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Resiliency

The U.S. has been described as a “death-phobic society”, in which deep, meaningful engagement with the dying, grief and loss is replaced by the voyeuristic consumption of graphic violence and mass death in TV and movies.19 As a result, the fact that every pregnancy does not end with a healthy baby is a reality that is rarely spoken about. The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics defines fetal death, or miscarriage, as the spontaneous death of a fetus any time during pregnancy. A stillbirth is defined as a fetal death later in pregnancy, after at least 20 weeks of gestation. In the U.S., black women are twice as likely as white women to experience a stillbirth. Even where black women receive similar prenatal care, we experience higher rates of stillbirth, especially preterm stillbirth.20

Several of the participants in our study reported having experienced unwanted/“spontaneous” pregnancy loss. Pregnancy loss carried a wide range of meanings for our participants. For Shelly, a miscarriage in her 13th week was the welcomed and accepted conclusion of a clearly unhealthy pregnancy:

You know there’s like twenty different kinds of miscarriages? My first one was a missed miscarriage. So the fetus passed at eight weeks, but my body did not let me know ‘til 12/13 weeks. So for a whole month, I am carrying around something that is not supposed to be there. That’s toxic and I’m feeling like shit. I couldn’t wait for it to end. I was like I’ve never been pregnant before but I know it ain’t supposed to feel like this. This is some bullshit! So when I realized what was happening, I was like, “Praise Jesus. I am drinking soon as I get home!” — Shelly, 40, hospital, planned cesarean birth

In sharp contrast, Adrienne’s two stillbirths represented the tragic loss of her children and her hope of becoming a mother. Her religious belief allows her to look forward to being reunited with her lost children, and she keeps their memory alive through prayer:

It’s just been really a process but my strong belief is I will see my son again. I believe in an after life and I believe that he’s waiting for me there so I do have a lot of hope. And I did have a second miscarriage after that. It was earlier in my pregnancy but too early to tell what the sex was or anything but in my mind I feel like it’s a little girl that’s in heaven and her name is Hope. And that’s for me, it’s like… and I have this urn with my son’s ashes and it’s a teddy bear so I can sleep with it whenever like I’m into ritual for healing and so we had a whole altar devoted to family. There was like an altar with the teddy bear and things and so that’s been really helpful for me but I have a little bear one of those tiny little bears, it’s a prayer…it’s a bear praying on its knees and the name of the bear is Hope so I have the two bears together. — Adrienne, 27, birth center, vaginal birth

Most of the women who had experienced pregnancy loss used spiritual and religious understandings to give meaning to their experience. For Shelly, a deep desire to know and follow God’s will allowed her to feel cared for and loved during her miscarriage. Her beliefs helped her to see her several miscarriages as part of a Divine plan:

I feel like miscarriages are a natural part of our gynecological journey. I feel like it is as natural as having periods. I had a miscarriage before I had [child]. And then I had [child] and then I had miscarriage after [child]. The way I am, I feel like God knows what’s best for me. The timing isn’t mine so even though it may have been my plan, it wasn’t His plan at the time. And whatever is meant to be is going to be. It’s like when you move, I move, Lord. You say go to the left and cool, I am over to the left. You say I am not pregnant, cool I am over to the right now. It wasn’t a— The hardest part about having a miscarriage for me was dealing with everybody else’s feelings around it. Because you wind up being like, “I’m fine.” Now I am trying to comfort you because you’re stressed out about what is going on with me. I had friends who went into depression when they found out I had a miscarriage. And I was like, “I can’t even deal with you right now because I am not depressed. I am feeling relieved. My body was suffering.” — Shelly, 40, hospital, planned cesarean birth

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Traditional African American and African cultures share a worldview in which the material and metaphysical worlds co-exist and are interrelated. For many black people in the U.S., traditional practices such as ancestral dreams continue to provide us with guidance, advice and even requests from the Spirit World.21 While ancestral dreams involve important elders who have passed on, such as a parent or grandparent, some of our participants also reported that the Spirit of their unborn child spoke to them. For Amara, a dream gave her notice that one of the twins that she was carrying was not going to make it. When she later suffered from bleeding, and learned that she was now only carrying one fetus, her dream served as a source of solace and meaning:

I had a dream, oh I forgot this part… I totally forgot! This is an important part. So I had this dream and in the dream there was these two little kids. It was a little girl and a little boy. And the little girl was saying “come on come on Let’s go come on it’s gonna be great!” And the little boy was pulling back and saying, “No, No, I don’t want to go.” And then I woke up and it was like I knew it was them. [Tearfully] you know in [African] spirituality we believe that some children are just spirit children they’re never meant to be here. Sometimes they get born into the world but they just want to be with their own kind they don’t want to be out here so…[tearfully] So that’s why I already had a name for him because I really felt like I had a relationship with both of them. I knew that [child] was on the way and that [African name]–that means God is merciful–was not gonna make it. — Amara, 41, hospital, vaginal birth

While the women in our study found ways to understand and cope with pregnancy and infant loss, they also struggled with external and internalized beliefs that made the experience of pregnancy or infant loss more painful. The first was the belief that they had done something to contribute to the death of their fetus or child. This belief may be the inadvertent result of public health messaging that encourages women to have a healthy pregnancy by avoiding unhealthy choices. For women who suffer pregnancy loss, this messaging can result in self-blame or blame by others close to her:

I was in excruciating, excruciating, excruciating pain. They told me I was pregnant and my fallopian tube had ruptured. The baby had latched on [sic] and she was like, “I can just give you some pills that we give cancer patients to kill radiation or something.” I’m like, “That doesn’t even sound right! No! I am not taking it.” She told me the only other way is to go into surgery and remove my fallopian tube. I said, “Do that.” It was very sad. He was there and I was just crying. My poor baby was trying to grow and it couldn’t grow- there was just not enough room. I was thinking maybe because I smoked or did I drink something? Did I drink too heavy one night? Like what did I— Was it something I did? But like she [participant] was saying, I think God has a plan. Some times it’s right, some times it’s not. — Kaela, 31, hospital, vaginal birth

We gotta normalize our language around miscarriages more. When you go through and feel like you’re the only one, no one wants to talk to you about it. It was people in my circle who had had ‘em but didn’t want to tell me about it. That had to be what they were going through. It doesn’t have to be a community process, you know. It would have been cool if you would have been like ‘It’s going to be ok, I have been there before’. But I didn’t get that. From anybody. I was like my own personal- I just had to puff myself back up and get through it. You know what I mean? I don’t mind telling people I have been through it if they want to know. It’s hormonal. It’s not because I had that glass of wine. It’s not because I got stressed out at work, you know what I mean? And they psyche us all out to think that all this stuff… was in our control and it never was. — Shelly, 40, hospital, planned cesarean birth

How Racism Harms Pregnant Women – And What Can Help

The second belief is the idea that the non-viable “fetus” is not a real “life” or child. In this era of fetal politics, where women with substance abuse issues are being prosecuted for “supplying drugs to a minor,” and home birthing women have been detained for “child endangerment,” it is vital that we do not separate out the legal identity of an unborn child/fetus from its mother. Doing so simply sets up the conditions for low-income pregnant people and pregnant people of color to be policed and punished.22 However, we also need to be careful not to utilize terminology and practices that pregnant women find dehumanizing. Most of the pregnant women in our study experienced an intense emotional and spiritual bond with their fetus/unborn child that deserves to be acknowledged. For Shelly (above) and Cindy, both of whom experienced a pregnancy that could not continue full term for medical reasons, the idea that their non-viable fetuses were going to be terminated and disposed of as medical waste was unacceptable:

We went in for an ultrasound, and it was supposed to be the one where if you want you can find out the gender, although we didn’t want to find out the gender. And the technician said, I’m going to need to call someone else in here. And she left. And this other guy came in and he was so short with words, and he basically said, “The baby’s spine stops at the neck, the baby has no brain.” [Tearfully] He said, “There’s just fluid in its head, and you’re going to need to see a specialist. “[Chokes] What? We had almost brought my older child with us to the ultrasound and we didn’t… I can’t even remember what its called right now, I think I’m blocking it out, but if your spinal cord doesn’t fully develop and there’s no brain, the children they don’t live, They might live a week or two, but they wouldn’t have any functioning, they’d be like a vegetable, they don’t have a brain so they can’t do anything. And so we had to decide fairly quickly because of how far we were along what to do. Whether to carry the baby to term and then deal with the baby dying. [Oh God] Or to terminate the pregnancy. And we made the decision that we were going to terminate the pregnancy and had to pay for a lot of that out of pocket. We had insurance but I felt, I’d carry this baby for so many months and they were going to flush it as medical waste? We wanted to have the remains and we wanted to at least bury it, or cremate it. We had to pay thousands of dollars for that. And its money we didn’t have. It’s on my credit card just rolling over year after year. But it was a part of us, and having gone through an abortion before I was just, I can’t. This isn’t medical waste. — Cindy, 35, hospital, vaginal birth, VBAC

One of BWBJ’s goals is to reduce infant and maternal mortality by transforming our nation’s maternal health-care system. At the same time, we recognize that miscarriage and stillbirth will always be a part of our pregnancy narrative. Black women who experience miscarriage and stillbirth need sensitive, non-blaming, culturally sensitive care that recognizes the meanings they ascribe to their pregnancies, and to pregnancy loss. Pregnant individuals who have to have a medically required abortion, rather than elective one, are likely to have a very different relationship to the fetus, experiencing it as a loved but unborn child, and caregivers should recognize this. In addition to providing counseling and support services, health insurance companies should provide coverage for dealing with the child’s remains in a culturally and spiritually appropriate way.

This is a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis.

Part Two: Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-two/feed/0Battling Over Birth: Black Women And The Maternal Health Care Crisis: Part Onehttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-one/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-one/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 22:21:43 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21104This is part one of a three part series and excerpt from the new book, Battling Over Birth: Black Women and the Maternal Health Care Crisis. Part One: Prenatal Care Barriers Part Two: Stress, Pregnancy and the “Strong Black Woman” Syndrome Part Three: Midwifery Model of Care “Battling Over Birth is a critical and timely […]

Part One: Prenatal Care Barriers

“Battling Over Birth is a critical and timely resource for understanding black women’s birthing experiences in the United States, a country where black women’s lives—and the lives they create—are at much greater risk of death and injury than those of non-black women … By distilling the common and diverse threads from over 100 black women, the BWBJ researchers have woven a multi-faceted tapestry that reflects what black women view as important and central to optimal birth experiences. Their recommendations for improving care and outcomes are grounded in black women’s authoritative knowledge. …This wonderful, important, necessary research by and for black women points in the direction that black women think we should go to ensure they have safe, healthy, and satisfying birth experiences and outcomes. We need to listen and act.”

Battling Over Birth: Prenatal Care Barriers

Part One

Experiences of Prenatal Care

Despite media images and popular beliefs to the contrary, pregnancy is not a medical condition and childbirth is not a medical emergency. Nevertheless, prenatal care is a critically important element in ensuring that pregnant people and their infants are as safe and healthy as possible. Relevant prenatal care can be effective in reducing preterm birth and high-risk pregnancy complications.1 Black women are more likely to go into labor before 37 weeks, and to give birth to infants who weigh below the low birthweight threshold of 5 pounds, 8 ounces.2 Since premature and low birth weight infants are at greater risk of dying, access to good quality prenatal care can be a matter of life and death. Prenatal care can also be instrumental in identifying any health concerns that may impact the mother’s physical wellbeing, including high blood pressure, which could be an indication of pre-eclampsia, or gestational diabetes. Studies have shown that maternal mortality rates are lowest for women who started prenatal care in their first trimester, and highest for those with little or no prenatal care.3

Despite the disparities regarding black infant and maternal mortality and morbidity (illness), it is important to note that most black pregnant individuals experience normal, healthy pregnancies that do not require any medical interventions. Nevertheless, all pregnant people can benefit from effective prenatal care that provides emotional reassurance and practical advice during an emotionally and physically vulnerable time.

Previous studies have found that African American women are less likely to receive adequate and timely prenatal care than white women.4 The women in our study reported a number of barriers to accessing, and persisting with prenatal care. These included: lack of or inadequate health insurance coverage, distrust of and poor treatment by prenatal care providers, and culturally inappropriate care.

Barriers to Prenatal Care: Health Insurance

Prior to the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as ObamaCare), women routinely paid more than men for the same health insurance coverage, 90 percent of individual health plans failed to provide maternity benefits, and in all but five states, being pregnant was a pre-existing condition that prevented a person from purchasing health insurance.5 Several of our participants gave birth prior to the creation of the Health Insurance Marketplace. Rashida6 moved to the Bay Area during her pregnancy. She shared how the pre-existing condition clause impacted her efforts to find a local caregiver:

I’ve had prenatal care since I was five weeks, but I don’t know who’s delivering my baby, my insurance in Baltimore city stops in August, the doctor I go to doesn’t accept state issued insurance, nobody will take me after seven months, so I don’t know how I’m delivering her, I don’t know how this is gonna work. I’m very much an always take care of my business type of person, and then it just so happens, I’m about to have a baby, and everything falls apart. — Rashida, home birth, vaginal birth 7

Birth in America for black mothers: a documentary film, The American Dream

The Affordable Care Act was designed to ensure that healthcare is affordable, universally available and non-discriminatory. The ACA has provided access to health insurance to an additional 7.7 million women in the U.S.8 A number of women who participated in our study were uninsured or underinsured in relation to pregnancy and childbirth. Nine percent of the women in our study reported that they did not have health insurance that covered their prenatal care and childbirth. An additional two percent reported that their health coverage was inadequate or was terminated during their pregnancy.

However, since our research took place between 2011-2016, and the Affordable Care Act extended insurance coverage during this time, it is to be hoped that the number of black women in California accessing health-care has improved. However, media stories indicate that the ACA is leaving some pregnant women paying out-of-pocket for prenatal care and delivery, or going without care.9 Our research suggests that more data is needed to determine whether black pregnant women are falling between the cracks of the new health-care system. One participant identified a dilemma facing women in low-to-middle-income families–she was unable to afford a private plan, but earned too much to qualify for Medi-Cal or receive assistance from free
health programs:

We moved to California and being a person with preexisting condition, health insurance is extremely traumatizing to me as well. I’ve had bouts in my life where I haven’t had health insurance and I’ve run out of supplies. It’s just scary to know that my country doesn’t care about me. I’m not a criminal. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been on welfare. I’ve never used any type of government assistance. I’ve worked since I was 15 years old. I have a Master’s degree. And I just felt like my country could give a shit. It’s like, die, who cares about you. And I’ve always felt that way. It just makes me really sad to think no one cares… [O]nce I found out that we were pregnant, people were like, “Go to Lifelong, go to Planned Parenthood, go to West Oakland Health Center, go here, go here, they’ll help you.” I went to all of those places and they were all like, “You’re not poor enough.” I was like, “I have a three year old, I’m diabetic, I’m pregnant, I need help.” They were like, “You’re not poor enough.” Once again, I just felt like a big F U. I’m a high-risk pregnancy. Anything can be going on inside my body right now. I need to go to a doctor. “Nope. Sorry.” Regina, 32, hospital, planned cesarean birth

Denying pregnant people access to prenatal care–care that in some instances can be life-saving–is a human rights violation that infringes Article 3 of the UDHR. Clearly more work is required to ensure that black women, alongside all pregnant people of color and low- and middle-income people receive universal access to prenatal care regardless of their economic status.

Barriers to Prenatal Care: Relationships with Medical Practitioners

A second barrier to receiving adequate prenatal care involved relationships with prenatal care providers that were characterized by lack of rapport, respect and trust. Where lack of health insurance is a barrier to accessing prenatal care, conflictual or poor relationships with medical practitioners can be a significant barrier to persistence with prenatal care beyond the first few visits. In addition, women who receive care that they perceive as disrespectful or discriminatory for a first pregnancy, are more likely to avoid prenatal care in future pregnancies.

In some instances, participants attended one or two prenatal visits and then decided that the experience was stressful and counter-productive for their emotional and physical wellbeing. In other cases, participants continued to attend out of a sense that this is what they “should” do, but were extremely unhappy with the care they received.

I actually broke up with her [my ob-gyn] very early in my pregnancy because I had some sort of, I don’t know if it was an infection, and I was in her office and she was saying what she thought I should do and I was saying what I thought I should do, and I wanted to try a more natural remedy, and I could see the look on her face. She said, “Ok I’m going to step out.” She stepped out of the room, I’m not even dressed and I’m not even clear if she was coming back. I sat in there probably 15 minutes and I was cold and I thought, I don’t know if she’s coming back, or if she’s pissed because I’m not doing what she wants… It was just a glimmer of who she might be as a care provider. So I left crying and I thought I’ve got to find somebody else. Cindy, 35, hospital, vaginal birth, VBAC

So even just walking into the hospital, I’d be, oh my God here we go. I have to deal with this foolishness. It was just to the point where they [the nurses] would have conversations over my head while they’re taking my blood pressure, about what’s going on this weekend. And I’m like, I don’t want to hear none of this. So I think I already would come in with a lot of attitude, and so I just hated coming to my prenatal appointments. Theresa, 42, birth center, vaginal birth

Young mothers, especially those in their teens were particularly at risk of having their autonomy stripped by medical practitioners, who tended to view them as lacking in the ability to make healthy, responsible decisions:

Prenatal care was the worst though. That was my worst experience… I coulda had all kinda medical problems and would have never known. And at that point I didn’t care, because I’m like: you are not going to violate me every time I come to this hospital, and tell me how you feel about my situation, my decisions and my body. That’s what would happen. So I stopped going… And it’s still happening to this day. I heard women do the same thing, say: “I’m not going to get prenatal care.” There could be a lot of serious issues going on with your baby, you would never know. And I didn’t care, I was like, God gonna bless me, I’m gonna pray, cause I’m not getting treated [like that]. With my fourth son I think I went in two times to the doctor with him. Because I felt like I love me more than they love me. I’m gonna look our for my baby versus these people touching me, saying they checking on us. So it was a hard road being a teen mom. Zanthia (see my story Zanthia)

A frequently expressed concern among women who received prenatal care with an ob-gyn was the belief that their physician did not support their vision for their birth. This was most commonly evidenced in lack of support for their desire to have a vaginal birth:

[M]y gynecologist at the time, he would bring up things that would bring up a weird energy in me. So then I said, let me start looking into some things. Cause almost every conversation I would have with him, from the time they confirmed I was pregnant was, you know, it ended up in a C-section. Every single conversation. And I would try and turn it around. You know, he’s a family doctor, he’s been in our family for years, so I would talk to my mom and she would say, well just talk to him. Every conversation, we still ended talking about a C-section. So I just stopped going to the appointments. Jordan, 31, hospital, vaginal birth

One of the participants described her experience of attending a prenatal visit for a scheduled external cephalic version–an attempt to turn her baby that was in breech presentation (feet first). Like Jordan above, she was convinced that the physician had very little interest in avoiding a cesarean birth. She was also alienated by his tone and affect toward her:

[S]o I got up there and the doctor, this white man who I’ve never met before in my life… I was just so scared and I hear the woman who is next door to me who is an African American woman. And he’s like, “Hey, how you doing? So this is your second pregnancy?” “Yeah.” “Oh so your baby’s breech?” “Yeah” I mean this is literally the time in between as he’s talking to her.

And he’s like, “Okay let’s give it a try…Nope, didn’t work. Let’s give it another try…Nope didn’t work. Okay Mrs. Thomas, so I’m going to set you up for a C-section on du-du-du-du- da,” gave her the appointment, she was out the door. And I’m listening, looking at my partner like, “Do you hear what he’s doing next door? That is not going to happen to us.” So then he comes next door into our room, our little room separated by the curtain and he’s like, “Oh, she didn’t take the medicine?” And he was like, “Oh fine, well that’s her choice.” He was just really rude. And so he literally just places his hands on my womb and I just got so tense, I just froze, you know. He’s like, “And it didn’t work.” And then it was time number two for him to try and I just had thought “Okay if this doesn’t work, I’m going to be in here for a C-section,” you know. And so I just surrendered. And he turned my baby around. Zaria, 34, home birth, vaginal birth

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Medical practitioners often work under difficult conditions that are not conducive to excellent service provision. Some of the participants recognized that there were structural barriers that prevented their ob-gyn or nurse practitioner from providing a more caring, informative and attentive service. The three key structural barriers were:

HMO model of care, which requires fast turnover of large numbers of patients, resulting in ten-minute appointments with busy and sometimes distracted medical staff.

the staff rotation system, whereby the pregnant person sees whoever is on rotation that day, rather than receiving consistent care from a medical professional who can get to know her.

I didn’t really have any specific doctor. It was a whole bunch of white ladies… My whole pregnancy, it was hella hot, they never had no snacks for me coming up in that hospital. I was hella pregnant and hungry. I was tired, I was wearing flats, my feet were swollen. There was no comfortable chair, the environment was, you were like, “This place’s kinda low budget.” Nadia, 22, hospital, vaginal birth

I started out going to see an ob-gyn at [HMO]… [A]ll of the good doctors were busy so I just ended up seeing this random woman, and she was pleasant and everything but the visits were 10 minutes. “So who are you?” No rapport whatsoever, so I think about two visits in I was like, “No, I’m not doing this, it’s not worth it.” Aliyah, 21, home birth, vaginal birth

Black women seeking prenatal care are impacted by interlocking systems of race, class, gender and age. Low-income black women often attend clinics and public hospitals that suffer from underfunding and understaffing. As black women, they enter a medical system from which historically, black people have been denied access, or incorporated as subjects of medical experimentation so that white patients could benefit. This toxic legacy of racism is described by Harriet Washington as “medical apartheid,” leading to ‘black iatrophobia”, fear and mistrust of (white) doctors by black people rooted in mistreatment and exploitation. In the context of the Sharing Circle with other black women, many of the participants felt no need to explain these feelings of mistrust and alienation; simply referring to a “white man” or “bunch of white ladies” indicated the social distance between them. One of the participants, whose relationship to race was more complex than some of the other participants due to her biracial identity, articulated the way in which societal racism and previous experiences of discrimination can impact the relationship with a white practitioner:

“Just so you know, like race and racism, those are big issues in my world being a person of color; I’m a black woman. I did come from a white mother, but I’m a black woman [laughs]. So there’s things that I see that white folks do that can really rub me the wrong way… so it was a big step for me to embrace her [white midwife]. Kara, hospital, unplanned cesarean birth

The following section explores how lack of cultural humility can exacerbate mistrust by black women of white medical practitioners and other nonblack care providers.

Barriers to Prenatal Care: Lack of Cultural Humility by Providers

Birthing While Black: An Interview With Midwife Jennie Joseph

A third barrier to accessing and persisting with prenatal care is a lack of cultural humility.10 In a context where behaviors and choices shaped by a Euro-American worldview and cultural context are viewed as appropriate, rationale and responsible, black women are vulnerable to judgment, shaming and coercion by well-meaning medical professionals who are unaware of their own implicit biases.

A site of significant stress and conflict between medical professionals and participants in the study was diet, nutrition and body weight. Prenatal care providers are concerned about women categorized as overweight and obese because these women have a higher risk of maternal mortality and morbidity. They are also concerned about diet and nutrition because of the disproportionate African American babies that are born with low birthweight. In contrast, advocates for big women, known as “fat activists,” argue that labeling and judging big women creates stigma and shaming that is counterproductive to efforts to create healthful, nonjudgmental and supportive environments for these women.11 In addition, black feminist scholars have identified the racial and cultural bias behind ideas about normative and ideal body types, including “boylike,” slim-waisted and -hipped woman.12 In black communities, alternative ideas of beauty and different body ideals exist, leading to a greater acceptance and celebration of roundness and curves, and an appreciation for “thick” women. At the same time, in sharp contrast to the controlling image of black women consuming large amounts of fried soul food, many black women eat “natural,” wholefood diets, including vegetarian or vegan diets and avoid American staples like burgers and processed bread as part of a natural, Afrocentric lifestyle.

Nadia, a big and young woman, experienced her prenatal care provider’s constant exhortations to eat less or to consume different foods as Eurocentric and blaming:

It was a good hospital, but the medical industry just like a lot of industries in America, it’s very white. You gotta accept that and roll with it. It’s very awkward, being a woman of color, being that my stature is so large, I’m a big woman. There’s nobody in that room who could be, “I feel you.” [I relate to you] Or they’re like, “What are you eating throughout your pregnancy?” And I’m like, “This is what we eat.” And they’re like, “Oh that’s not healthy.” Or, “Oh you’re gaining too much weight.” Where in reality, the medical standards are very off and not culturally relevant. Nadia, 22, hospital, vaginal birth

Regina, a big woman who was pregnant with twins, experienced her prenatal care provider’s scrutiny of her diet and lack of weight gain as oppressive and judgmental:

When I’d go into the doctor and they would call me and ask me what have I been eating, I just felt so judged. They’re like, “You’re not eating enough, you’re not eating enough. You have two babies; you need to eat way more than a normal pregnancy. You need to eat more.” You’re telling me I need to eat more and I’m not gaining enough weight, but I’m a big girl. In my head it was hard to be like, eat more. I’ve never been told to eat more. Usually I’m told to lose weight. It was a really hard thing for me to understand. I wasn’t hungry. I felt like I was eating enough for myself. I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t feel like I was weak or tired. I was still working. But I wasn’t gaining enough weight. I feel like I wasn’t getting those A’s. Regina, 32, hospital, planned cesarean birth

Similarly, Hannah who was seeing a nutritionist due to being categorized as underweight early in her pregnancy felt that she was judged for not eating a diet that conformed to Euro-American norms:

Amara: Yeah they are quite judgmental too. I remember my nutritionist she tried to be really, really nice, but she basically… She had me write everything down I ate for about a week and bring it in and all. She looks and she said you basically don’t eat anything, do you? I am like, that made no sense to me. I mean what she meant was because I am a vegetarian, I eat a lot of tofu, brown rice, vegetables, you know. But I mean I eat stuff, obviously. I have been around for forty years, I have probably eaten, you know? Yeah and she was like, “You know you have to double your caloric intake,” or something like that. But she should’ve just said [puts on gentle voice] “We want you to double your calories.” Instead she said. “You really don’t eat anything!”

BWBJ: You mean the American diet where everything is super-sized?

Amara: Right.

Hannah: Why don’t you go to McDonald’s?

Amara: Right, exactly. [Everyone laughing.] That’s what she was looking for. What, there are no french fries?

Join the LiberateBlackBirth Campaign! With the release of Battling Over Birth, Black Women Birthing Justice are launching a campaign to transform the maternal health-care system in California. Join us!! Together we can ensure that black women and pregnant individuals have the right to birth with safety and autonomy, where, how and with whom they choose.

It is generally assumed that women who have a high commitment to health and self-care are more likely to attend prenatal appointments, and to follow the suggestions they receive from health-care providers. In contrast, for some of the women in the study, removing themselves from “care” that they experienced as stressful, blaming, violating or disrespectful was an act of self-care and love for their unborn child. As Zanthia above states, “I love me more than they love me. I’m gonna look out for my baby.” While this is a logical response to “care” that actually creates more stress for the pregnant person, it also has significant risks in the infrequent cases in which women or their infants experience a health crisis (see My Story: Zanthia). When women report that they are avoiding prenatal care despite health-care coverage that makes it affordable for them, it may be tempting to label them as irresponsible and to blame them for any negative consequences. However, this study has demonstrated that for some women, avoiding prenatal care is a rational response to inadequate and stressful care by providers who they experience as cold, disinterested, disrespectful or Eurocentric. If black women’s pregnancy experiences and outcomes are to improve, it is essential that medical professionals are trained to provide care that is affirming, empowering and culturally relevant.

MY STORY: Zanthia13

Zanthia is a working class African American woman, doula, parenting educator and mother of eight children, four of whom she birthed before she was 20 years old. She has experienced prenatal care in Oakland, CA, over a two decade period, and feels emotionally scarred by many of those experiences:

I got a lot of negative experiences at the hospital, being a teen mom. Prenatal care was the worst though. That was my worst experience. That’s what I said. I coulda had all kinda medical problems and would have never know. And at that point I didn’t care, because I’m like, you are not going to violate me every time I come to this hospital. And tell me how you feel about my situation, my decisions and my body. That’s what would happen. So I stopped going. Because I was in teen mother classes all through high school, they told me when I got in 12th grade, you can’t go no more, cause you could teach the class. I was pregnant all the time. Even with all that experience and knowing about my body, I never had respect as a mother going to the hospital wanting to get care.

And my friends, because I went to class with them, they had the same experience. When they went to prenatal care, very few of them had doctors that would explain things to them about their bodies, or talk about they had choices. It was always getting told what to do. I seen them get late term abortions because these doctors felt that you don’t need to be having a baby, and they would convince their parents to do this. And I seen them. I would talk to my peers about this so I knew it wasn’t just my experience going to the hospital being treated like this…

Well, after my first one at 14, I stopped going to prenatal visits regularly. Because of how I’d get treated when I go. The prenatal visits were scary. They would talk about me. And even though I had my eighth one and I was 40, I still got treated [badly], cause people thought I was younger. They wouldn’t look at my age. I’ve had nurses literally come back and forth giving me birth control, not even the kind I’m scheduled for but offering me what they thinking. I had to file a complaint on her because I felt invaded because I’m not a teenager no more. And I have post-traumatic stress disorder because of that. Seriously. I didn’t get prenatal care with my second, third, fourth. The only reason I got it with the fifth was ‘cause… I wanted to see the ultrasound. Then the sixth and the seventh I kind of went, but if I felt any of that type of [disrespect]… I had doctors telling me to go ahead and get an abortion. Just go ahead and get an abortion. I mean recently. When I had my fourth one. So this was not light years ago.

During my pregnancy with my eighth child, I noticed that I had some unusual swelling and went to my ob-gyn to get it checked out. I had a black doctor at [HMO], I went in to see her. She said, “Your blood pressure’s too high. I’m not seeing you.” I was like, “Huh? You’re not goin’ to see me? And she was like, you have to take these pills and that’s the only way I’ll see you… So I felt offended. I felt like, I’d had kids since I was 14 so I had been abused a lot by hospitals in all different kind of ways with birthing my children. So for me to go in there and a black woman to tell me, you’re not going to help me because my blood pressure’s high and I’m high risk and you’re not going to have a dead woman and baby…So she referred me to the high-risk clinic. And I got a Caucasian man that was my doctor and he was like, “You done had 8.” This was my eighth baby. So he was like, “You tell me.” And we worked pretty good. He didn’t put me on the medication, because that was my concern and I was trying to talk to her about it and she said she wouldn’t see me unless I got on the medication. And I was like; mmm I want some alternatives here.

At 27 weeks pregnant, I went to the hospital ‘cause I was swollen and couldn’t breathe. The doctors found two litres of fluid on my lungs. I was drowning in my own fluid… if I’d stayed home a couple more days, I’d have been dead at home. So I had an emergency C-section; my little girl weighed a mere two pounds, two ounces. During the coming weeks my daughter stayed in an incubator in the NICU. One day, they came out and told me she had stopped breathing. I never saw any of my kids not breathing. And to have a child not breathing, that was like; Wow. Not my baby. All my babies breathe. On top of that I couldn’t trust the doctors and nurses that were supposed to care for my baby, because of what I’d been through. You got to be careful who care for your kids and I knew that. Just cause people have those positions don’t mean that they’re safe healthy people that have good intentions cause they’re nurses or doctors. I knew that though. So it was traumatic. I had to see a therapist. I had to do a lot of intense stuff to leave my baby there. Cause I didn’t feel safe and I didn’t feel she was safe leaving her there.

My baby got better and eventually I took her home, but it was really, really traumatic for me. So I’m thankful that we’re doing this [Sharing Circle] and to be part of this [research]. Cause I’ve had some cruel things and being a teen mom a lot of the times happen during my birth. And I can related to so many people’s stories of the unfair things and the cruelty that happens during childbirth. And that if we can’t get support around it… they don’t look so beautiful any more, they don’t bring the joy, cause I gotta be loved first before I can give it to somebody else.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/battling-birth-black-women-maternal-health-care-crisis-part-one/feed/0I Wish…http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/i-wish/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/i-wish/#respondTue, 06 Feb 2018 21:12:21 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21091Parents and the people who care about children understood how different the child’s reality is from our, more or less, adulterated version. What does adulterated mean? Tainted, mixed, polluted, contaminated. What we call reality is filtered by experience, our ideas, beliefs and fantasies, and yet, filtered is what we see. It is our reality. Adulterated […]

]]>Parents and the people who care about children understood how different the child’s reality is from our, more or less, adulterated version. What does adulterated mean? Tainted, mixed, polluted, contaminated. What we call reality is filtered by experience, our ideas, beliefs and fantasies, and yet, filtered is what we see. It is our reality. Adulterated is normal and we rarely pause to consider that what is normal for us is not normal for our children. Not seeing this difference we impose our interpretation of reality on our children, often with painful consequences.

Carly Elizabeth is fast approaching the 3.5 mark. This evening we were laying on bed, she in her robe and I in my scruffies. “I want a snack,’ she announced. “How about peeing and pajamas,” I replied. “I want a snack,” she repeated. Pretending to be a dictator, I roared, arms waving, “what about peeing and pajamas!” Laughing, she insisted, “I want a snack.” After two more rounds I asked, “what snack do you want?” “I’ll show you,” she said. “OK, let’s go,” and we ran to the pantry, she arriving first, of course.

It is astonishing how perceptive and sophisticated this 3.5-year-old is, appropriate humor being the key. Humor is very complex, often saying one thing and meaning quite another. Perceiving on the spot and understanding the play, then returning with an equally flipped-meaning response is very complicated, and yet, Carly plays along and initiates this wit regularly. Appreciating this exploding capacity levels and equalizes the relationship. No, Carly does not have the experience to cut jokes about Nietzsche, but the underlying capacity is already well developed. All she needs is a playmate. Not a dictator.

How often have you heard a parent or grandparent say to a child, after someone does something nice, “now, say thank you.” It sounds like bragging, but far from it. We have never said to Carly, “say thank you,” and yet she says thank you seamlessly when another hands her toast with jam or lifts her into the waiting car, not because we tell her to. She simply mirrors how she is treated. After our snack, our pee party, and pajamas are in place, she reaches for a book. “I need my glasses for this one,” I say. “I’ll get them,” she says and returns in a snap. “Thank you,” I say. “You are welcome,” she replies.

Because I sincerely see Carly as competent and respect that her interests and needs are as real and important to her as my interests and needs are to me, she feels seen and appreciated for who she is. This is not spoiling the child. It is seeing them as they are. I say this at 3.5 but it was equally true at birth, at six weeks, at six months and at two years, even though what she was interested in and needed was completely different at each age and stage. Coupled with this respect and appreciation is a keen empathic awareness that Carly’s world, her reality, is completely different from my own. She is more absorbed in ‘what is’ than I am. Her world is still highly sensory. Verbal abstractions are just that, abstract. She listens with quiet attention while completely absorbed in the sand pouring from the pail. To her, however, the sand is more real, much more engaging and therefore important. I appreciate that it will take several nudges before she disengages from the sand and reacts to my abstraction, like; ‘it’s time to go.’ Knowing this, I start a little early with a hint or suggest a strawberry would taste really yummy. “One more screaming ride down the driveway on the scooter and it will be time for coconut milk.” Hint. Hint.

In a way, I’m a Pied Piper, leading with play, redirecting what might become conflict with humor and story. Then, when I need to be serious, when I need Carly to give careful attention, I say so, and she does. But, that is really rare. Most of the time we are having fun. Serious slips in-between.

If I assumed, as many do, that Carly shares my reality, is as focused on semantic abstractions as I am, is living in the past and future, we’re in trouble. Carly is still a child of the dream. Her brainwaves resonate in a different frequency. I have to slip into her world and then communicate. Not expect her to operate at my level, to live in my adult world. I have to shift mental gears when I communicate. That takes time and attention. But the payoff is enormous; very little conflict, a greater feeling of being together, when serious is needed there is careful attention, when I have important needs she is there for me, at 3.5. This attunement functions like a compass. It brings our relationship into playful coherence. Not sharing this attunement might be compared to two travelers looking at two compasses, pointing in different directions insisting theirs is right. “This way.” “No, this way.” This shifting into the child’s world works every time; at three days, three months, or three years. Try it, and watch conflicts melt away like snowflakes on your nose.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/i-wish/feed/0Why Use Organic Seed? PLUS Our Fresh Picks for Best Organic Seed Companies!http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/our-fresh-picks-for-best-organic-seed-catalogs/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/our-fresh-picks-for-best-organic-seed-catalogs/#respondMon, 05 Feb 2018 01:40:08 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/2012/01/our-fresh-picks-for-best-organic-seed-catalogs/The Growing Demand for Organic Seed Who owns seed? Check out the image to the left to see the seriousness of the seed monopoly, and therefore the monopoly of our food supply, as it has evolved over the last 100 years. Below you will find the seed catalogs that I have grown up with as […]

Who owns seed? Check out the image to the left to see the seriousness of the seed monopoly, and therefore the monopoly of our food supply, as it has evolved over the last 100 years.

Below you will find the seed catalogs that I have grown up with as a home gardener, an organic CSA farmer, and, eventually, a biodynamic gardener. I am especially fond of Baker Creek Seeds, as I remember their first colorful and homey catalog with Jere Gettle’s passion for seed collecting jumping off of every page in 1998, the year I was gardening with a toddler in tow. I have followed him and his young family on their world wide trips (Jere is known as the Indiana Jones of seed collecting) and even visited the Baker Creek Seed Bank in Petaluma, California in 2012.

Historically, seed companies were generally small, often family-run businesses. Because they were regionally based, they could focus on varieties well-suited to the local environment. A Pacific Northwest company, for example, would specialize in different cultivars than a company based in the Southeast. However the absorption of these small, independent seed businesses into large multinationals, combined with the advancement of biotechnology resulting in hybrids and GMO seeds, has led to a serious loss of genetic diversity. The public is now at the mercy of the corporations that control the seeds.

In the past few years, gardeners have realized the inherent danger in this situation. A growing movement is striving to preserve and expand our stock of heritage and heirloom varieties through seed saving and sharing opportunities. Seed Libraries is a practical guide to saving seeds through community programs, including:

Step-by-step instructions for setting up a seed library

A wealth of ideas to help attract patrons and keep the momentum going

Profiles of existing libraries and other types of seed saving partnerships

Whoever controls the seeds controls the food supply. By empowering communities to preserve and protect the genetic diversity of their harvest, Seed Libraries is the first step towards reclaiming our self-reliance while enhancing food security and ensuring that the future of food is healthy, vibrant, tasty, and nutritious.

Notice below how all of these organic seed catalogs have “stories” about people who are tied to the land and are passionate about caring for the earth… all except for Seeds of Change at the bottom of the list. I have included them because they are so prolific, but really, discover for yourself the inspirational efforts to preserve our food supply’s integrity by these individuals and companies and decide for yourself who you want to support.

Why Buying and Saving Organic Seed Can Save the Planet

The loss of heirloom and landrace crop varieties over the last century is well documented. Consolidation in the seed industry, changes in breeding methods and technology, restrictive intellectual property practices, and the loss of wild and farming land to development all contribute to the erosion of the plant genetic materials that are essential to sustaining life.

In addition to this loss in genetics there has been a concurrent loss in the base of knowledge and skills necessary to properly steward and improve plant genetics in a ecologically and ethically sound manner. Farmers, once the primary seed stewards around the globe, have rapidly been removed from the seed circle – no longer participating in plant breeding or conservation. Only a few generations ago, the practices of on-farm seed saving and basic crop improvement were not only common, but necessary.

While university and private sector involvement in seed systems has provided much gain, it has also created a field of specialization that has left the farmer as an “end-user” of a product instead of an active participant in building and maintaining plant genetic health and diversity. The diversity of our domesticated plant genetics – flavor, color, abundance, nutrition – is a direct result of the relationship between farmers and their crops. The unhealthy trends in seed systems put us at risk of losing our seed heritage – and the skills necessary to conserve, reinvigorate and improve this heritage for future generations. Please watch the video below for a better understand and “in the field” look at organic seeds:

Our Fresh Picks for Organic Seed Companies

Jere Gettle always had a passion for growing things, and at age three, he planted his first garden. Ever since that day, he wanted to be involved in the seed industry. So at the age of 17, he printed the first small Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog in 1998. The company has grown to offer 1300 varieties of vegetables, flowers and herbs—the largest selection of heirloom varieties in the U.S.A.

Baker Creek carries one of the largest selections of seeds from the 19th century, including many Asian and European varieties. The company has become a tool to promote and preserve agricultural and culinary heritage. Our company and seeds have been featured in The New York Times, the Associated Press, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart, and many others. Gardeners can request a free 196-page color catalog that now mails to 310,000 gardeners nationally. (Click on the image to open the free 2018 PDF version.)

Baker Creek started hosting festivals in 2000 as an idea to bring gardeners, homesteaders and natural food enthusiasts together to exchange thoughts, seeds, listen to speakers and enjoy vendors, old-time music and much more. These festivals gave birth to the idea for our pioneer village, Bakersville. Other projects include our trial gardens, seed collecting expeditions, our popular online forums at idigmygarden.com and educational produce exhibits.

Baker Creek wants you to know:

All of our seed is non-hybrid, non-GMO, non-treated and non-patented.

We do not buy seed from Monsanto-owned Seminis. We boycott all gene-altering companies. We are not members of the pro-GMO American Seed Trade Organization! We work with a network of about 100 small farmers, gardeners and seed growers to bring you the best selection of seeds available! Many of our varieties we sell were collected by us on our travels abroad.

We offer over 1300 fine varieties! Unique seeds from 70 countries!

Seed Savers Exchange

The Seed Savers Exchange conserve and promote America’s culturally diverse but endangered garden and food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants.Seed Savers Exchange takes threats to biodiversity seriously. We maintain a collection of more than 20,000 heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, herb, and plant varieties, including over 1,000 varieties of heritage apple trees. We take great care to ensure the health and viability of our collection for generations of growers to come. We keep the bulk of our collection in an underground freezer vault at Heritage Farm.

Ex situ preservation is what we call the practice of protecting seeds in genebanks and in situ preservation is the work you do in your back yard.Gardeners share homegrown seeds with one another through our seed exchange. The seed exchange is available online and in print to encourage seed savers of all generations to participate.

Territorial Seed Company

Territorial Seed Company is a privately held company, wholly owned by Tom and Julie Johns. The first Territorial Seed catalog was written in the fall of 1979. The earliest seed-production crops were grown in isolation within neighbors’ backyards; including an open-pollinated Brussels sprout, a heirloom cranberry bean, and Lorane fava bean cover crop seed. In wintertime, the mail-order seed business operated in a drafty warehouse, where customers waited their turn on the telephone party line and neighbors who seasonally helped in the warehouse, took turns chopping kindling to keep the woodstove stoked.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Like anything grown from seed, the company known as Johnny’s Selected Seeds had the smallest of beginnings. It put down its first roots in relative obscurity in spring 1973, when founder Rob Johnston, Jr. at age 22, and with $500.00 in savings, started the fledgling seed company in a New Hampshire farmhouse attic, moving in the fall to his parents’ home in Acton, Massachusetts.

In 2003, the 30th anniversary for Johnny’s Selected Seeds, the company opened the Catalog Store. The store, located at 955 Benton Avenue, Winslow, ME offers a physical location where customers can shop and experience Johnny’s top-notch customer service.

In 2006, Johnny’s launched an employee ownership program, with Johnston and his wife, Janika Eckert selling shares to an Employee Stock Ownership Trust. The employees currently own one third of the company’s stock and are on track for 100% ownership by 2016. Looking forward, the future for Johnny’s is bright, and the company will continue, as it always has, to focus on providing customers with the best products, information, research and service.

Turtle Tree Biodynamic Seeds

Turtle Tree Biodynamic Seeds are a small non-profit seed company that sells 100% open-pollinated vegetable, herb and flower seeds, all grown using biodynamic and organic practices both in our own seed garden and by other farmers and gardeners who use biodynamic methods. All our seed is non-gmo, non-hybrid, never treated, and grown without the use of chemical inputs. We are a part of a Camphill Village in Copake, NY, an intentional community, which includes people with developmental disabilites. People of all abilities help with growing, cleaning and packing our seeds. Our Mission includes growing and distributing high quality open-pollinated, biodynamically and organically grown vegetable, herb and flower seeds, and encouraging and eduacating people who want to grow and save open-pollinated vegetable, herb and flower seeds.

Fedco Seed

Fedco is a cooperative, one of the few seed companies so organized in the United States. Because we do not have an individual owner or beneficiary, profit is not our primary goal. Consumers own 60% of the cooperative and worker members 40%. Consumer and worker members share proportionately in the cooperative’s profits through our annual patronage dividends.

Our cooperative structure gives workers a real voice in running the company and a real stake in its success, enabling us to attract and retain talented workers. Year after year our staff turnover has been very low. The cooperative ethic recognizes that we are all in this together. What is good for our managers should be good for our workers and good for our customers and vice versa. Beginning from a Maine base with 98 orders the first year, after 30 years we now serve growers in all 50 states, filling over 24,000 orders totaling $3 million annually.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange started in 1982 as an outgrowth of a love affair with heirloom varieties and in seed saving. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange had its beginning in a small family garden and a kitchen co-opted for seed processing. The kitchen garden has since expanded to numerous growing areas supplemented by a nationwide seed grower network. Now the seed company has its own office, germination testing facility, and environmentally controlled seed storage areas. From the beginning we have believed that our seed company serves: (1) as a source for new, high performance varieties, and (2) most importantly, as a preservation tool for collecting and distributing varieties with special qualities: varieties with heritage, flavor, disease resistance, or other qualities of interest to gardeners.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is located near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in the gently rolling foothills of Central Virginia, USA, and offers more than 700 varieties of vegetable, flower, herb, grain and cover crop seeds. We emphasize varieties that perform well in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, although gardeners and farmers from all over the country grow our seeds. We do extensive germination and purity testing to ensure that we always provide the highest quality possible.

Botanical Interests

Curtis and Judy started Botanical Interests because they believed that gardeners were not getting the information they needed from their seed packets. Their desire for more information along with their passion for spreading gardening wisdom led them to create a unique seed packet that is not only beautiful, but is also filled with facts, tips, recipes and quality seed.

When they realized that the venerable tradition of American families passing their gardening lore, techniques and even secrets from generation to generation was fading, Curtis and Judy knew they had to help preserve all that knowledge. “At Botanical Interests, we’re helping people reconnect with some of that lost art,” Judy says. Every Botanical Interests seed packet is designed to help gardeners succeed and create their own traditions. Featuring gorgeous botanical artists’ renderings of each variety, every packet provides a wealth of information, inside and out. “I like to say that we’re a gardening education company that just happens to sell seeds,” Curtis says. “Our packets are like mini-encyclopedias, full of information to inspire and assist every type of gardener.”

High Mowing Organic Seeds

High Mowing Organic Seeds began in 1996 with just 28 varieties. After tilling up a portion of his backyard and turning his shed into a seed packing area, founder Tom Stearns had no trouble selling the seed he grew that first year. Suddenly, what had started as a hobby became a practical business pursuit, as Tom realized the growing and unmet demand for organic seed. This demand allowed Tom to expand the business beyond his backyard, renting parcels of land to produce the seed he was selling through a hand-made catalog. By 2001, business had grown to such an extent that Tom began to contract with other local farms to grow seed, in addition to continuing to produce seed himself on High Mowing’s own 5 acres.

High Mowing Organic Seeds has grown exponentially, and what started as a one-man operation is now a thriving business making available to home gardeners and commercial growers over 600 heirloom, open-pollinated and hybrid varieties of vegetable, fruit, herb and flower seed. True to our roots, High Mowing Organic Seeds continues to grow many of the varieties we sell on our 40 acre farm, setting us apart from the majority of other seed companies.

Seeds of Change

Even though they are now owned by the Mars, Inc, company, Seeds of Change says they have remained true to their original vision by offering the largest selection of organic seeds in the industry, including heirloom, traditional, and rare seeds. “Our seeds are produced through a network of certified organic family farms and professional growers. Through these partnerships, we continually cultivate study and develop seeds with the goal of producing the finest certified organic, open-pollinated varieties to share with our fellow gardeners and farmers. Each year, we collect data and conduct evaluation on all of our Seeds of Change varieties of seed. Our research and testing provide confidence in the quality of our seed and ensure high germination rates that produce healthy, hardy plants.”

Seed Saving and Exchange Resources

Enjoy these resources for seed saving and the Organic Seed Alliance’s explanation below for why it is necessary to purchase organic seed. Skip to the video if you are a visual learner!

Find out the Organic Seed Alliance’s strategy for preserving biodiversity through uncorrupted seed and meeting the growing demand for organic seed. Download the State of Organic Seed Report for free.

Join a Seed Savers Exchange and perhaps your home garden seeds could end up in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, where over 600,000 seeds are stored in “the ultimate safety deposit box for biodiversity and global food supply preservation… The Svalbard Global Seed Vault offers protection against permanent loss due to natural disasters, wars, equipment failures, accidents, and loss of funding that can plague even the best gene banks.”

Save a Tree and Download many of these catalogs at their websites, or just order the seeds online. Where possible, I have included a link to the downloadable, pdf or online version of the catalog.

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/our-fresh-picks-for-best-organic-seed-catalogs/feed/0Stories Of Connection To Heal The Primal Wound – Part 7http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/#respondSun, 04 Feb 2018 19:19:19 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21045Each of us is connected to not only the web of life, but to the web of our stories. Our Stories In early life, we develop neurobiologically grounded stories based on how we are treated—with kindness and empathy or with cruelty and manipulation. These impressions form the base of our social personality before our conscious mind comes fully […]

]]>Each of us is connected to not only the web of life, but to the web of our stories.

Our Stories

In early life, we develop neurobiologically grounded stories based on how we are treated—with kindness and empathy or with cruelty and manipulation. These impressions form the base of our social personality before our conscious mind comes fully online. These are implicit, tacit stories our unconscious carries throughout the rest of life—in a direction toward openness or toward bracing against the world. (Narvaez, 2011; Tomkins, 1965).

Read Part One: The Primal Wound: Do You Have One?

Communities have a choice in what orientation—openness to or bracing against others—that they will foster in young children. Supportive communities allow parents to be responsive to and supportive of their young children. Born so immature, parental treatment shapes the functioning of our physiological systems and psychological functioning (Narvaez, 2014). We are biosocial constructions: Our biology is shaped by our social experience. The characteristics of the Evolved Nest are what helped our ancestors survive and thrive, fostering openness and wellbeing (Narvaez, Panksepp, Schore & Gleason, 2013).

The stories that rescuers in World War II tell are those of connection—’before me, there was a human being in need, how could I not help?” This was not bracing against others but openness to the other. Such an orientation appears to have been grounded in early life social support they experienced, support that builds secure attachment to parent or caregiver (Oliner & Oliner 1988).

Our Communities

Text to SUBSCRIBE or click on the image to subscribe with email

As children grow they take up the stories the community promotes. What is the nature of our connection to the natural world, to the universe, to one another? We adults can talk to our children and the children of others about their connections. What connections, webs of relationships, do you notice? Tell the world.

We can tell our stories of connection and transformation in the natural world.

Annie Dillard (1999) describes a startling encounter with a weasel when they locked eyes for the longest moment, feeling as if they exchanged souls for that instant. Her writings are filled with perceptive descriptions of connection within Nature and spirit.

Albert Schweitzer (1997) tells of the church bells ringing right when he was aiming his slingshot at a songbird. That was the last time he thought of killing a bird. He later became a world renown humanitarian, living a life of medical service.

Aldo Leopold (2016) tells of when he was young and part of the rampant wolf-killing culture, of shooting a wolf and looking the wolf in the eyes as she died. Never again.

Each of our lives is a pilgrimage, a journey led by our spirit, our unconscious awareness of things. We can describe this pathway as a hero’s journey. Many of us face challenges in figuring out who we are, what our gifts are, what our purpose is. But if we start to follow “our bliss” or our passionate interests, we have started on the path (Campbell, 2008).

Once you take up the journey, guides and mentors will come. You will notice stories that encourage you. Despite obstacles, if you stay focused, help will be provided. Of course, sometimes the challenge is to discern the difference between the necessary obstacles we must overcome to reach our dream and the signs telling us we are on the wrong path.

The hero’s journey myth helps frame the process of our becoming. Hollywood movies use this myth (or monomyth, according to Joseph Campbell, mythology scholar). The first film where it was most intentionally used was Star Wars.

Have you noticed a new idea or tantalizing path that keeps popping into your head or turning up in your life? Will you say yes? Will you take up the hero’s journey?

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/02/stories-connection-heal-primal-wound-part-7/feed/0The Children’s Fire: Our Culture’s Missing, Ancient, Core Valuehttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/childrens-fire-cultures-missing-ancient-core-value/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/childrens-fire-cultures-missing-ancient-core-value/#respondMon, 29 Jan 2018 21:49:24 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20989“Can you imagine? Can you imagine our society if we placed the children’s fire at the center of all institutions of power in our government, in our corporations, in our religions, in all institutions of power, if we rekindled the children’s fire and the chiefs of those different organizations pledged themselves to that fire. Can […]

“Can you imagine? Can you imagine our society if we placed the children’s fire at the center of all institutions of power in our government, in our corporations, in our religions, in all institutions of power, if we rekindled the children’s fire and the chiefs of those different organizations pledged themselves to that fire. Can you imagine the impact on our society?”

ABOUT

Tim “Mac” Macartney founder of Embercombe (www.embercombe.co.uk) introduces the “Children’s Fire” to the attendees of the Qi Global summit in Singapore. He speaks of how over a period of 20 years he was trained by a group of mixed-blood Native Americans to appreciate that many ancient cultures used to govern themselves by a fundamental guiding princiciple, “no law, no action, shall be made that harms the children”…the Children’s Fire (a small flame or fire) was placed at the centre of their meetings as a reminder of this principle. Mac was encouraged and inspired to bring this idea to the places he worked, in business and as far as his sphere of influence can reach. He invites us to consider, “what kind of culture is it that would not place the Children’s Fire at the centre of its decision making bodies and halls of power?”

TRANSCRIPT

Please support our 20 year old, award-winning, nonprofit work to Share the New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family.

We let years go by. You imagine now tens and tens and hundreds of years passing by. We cross an ocean. We cross a continent. We cross another ocean. We are now thousands of years back in ancient America.

Men and women, chiefs of indigenous people in that country, sat together with the question, “How do we govern our people?” And looking out into nature and into creation all around them, they said, “We understand that as children of nature she will teach us and if we look carefully enough, we will understand. She will teach us how we must govern our people.”

This body of work. This earliest form of democracy was known as the circle of law. If you can imagine these elder chiefs sat looking out into creation saying, “What do we see?”

One of the first principles which they observed and understood was the balance between male and female in creation. They observed that when that balance went out of kilter, when it was in some manner disturbed, then repercussions extremely negative to that species would begin to occur.

So they said, “When we establish our council of chiefs, we will place in every chief a man and a woman in each of the seats in order that we will find balance in our human laws in our human society.”

They looked again into creation. And they said, “What do all of the animals and all of the beings of nature seem to give primacy to in the way in which they lived their lives and they organize themselves? And the answer to that question was their love of their children, of their young.”

So these chiefs as they began to construct the councils, the councils within which laws were made, placed a tiny little fire in the middle of the council circle which they called the children’s fire and the children’s fire was a pledge, a promise, a pledge of the chiefs, a promise to themselves no more, no actions shall be allowed that will harm the children. “No more. No action. No entity. No organization. No power of any kind, we will permit to emerge that will harm the children.”

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I was taught this by a group of mixed blood Native American people, teaching me and asking me to carry the story out into the circles in which I speak and work, mainly business circles. So a couple of years ago, I stood in front of an audience of business people, chief executives and the like, and I told them about the children’s fire. I said, “Can you imagine? Can you imagine our society if we placed the children’s fire at the center of all institutions of power in our government, in our corporations, in our religions, in all institutions of power, if we rekindled the children’s fire and the chiefs of those different organizations pledged themselves to that fire. Can you imagine the impact on our society?”

There was a silence in that room. A long, long silence as people imagined what the ramifications of that might be. Then I said, “Now I have a second question. What kind of society is it that would not place the children’s fire at the very center of all its institutions of power?”

There was a long silence, a very long long silence. In my mind I was thinking, “It’s an insane society. A society that is lost to itself. A society that is caught inside a dream that is self destructive to the Nth degree. It is a society that will not place the children’s fire at the very center of its institutions of power.” And the silence continued.

Now sat next to me was a senior director of sustainability for one of the major oil companies, this was a couple years ago. If you can imagine that person sat here next to me now, he was a very sweet man. He looked like he might have been your grandfather, the one that you would have loved to have, or your favorite uncle. He was just a sweet and ordinary lovely man. But just like many other sweet, lovely, and ordinary people, when things began to go a little bit off track, he wasn’t quite sure what to do and as the silence extended itself, he became nervous that his conference was about to derail. He got to the point when he couldn’t stand it any longer where he jumped to his feet and he said, “Yes, well, thank you very much, Max. That’s very interesting, but right now ladies and gentleman, we have important work to do.”

So I moved to sit down. And at the back of the auditorium in a room very like this, a voice called out, “Why don’t you sit down? Why don’t you sit down?” And this guy next to me was looking around and I was looking around trying to see where the voice was coming from. Everybody else in the auditorium, people were nervous. Was this planned, was this unplanned? The voice said, “This room is full of grief. This room is full of grief. No one has spoken. We have not spoken because we know that we have pissed on the children’s fire in our society. And though we say we love our children, we practice businesses which regularly, everyday tramples the future of our children. The children’s fire is not alive. We are in grief. Why don’t you sit down?”

And this man, very much like you or me, he said, “Well, uh…” and he was flustered. He said, “Well if everybody thinks so…” And there was a long silence. So just mumbling to himself, he sat down and I stepped forward again.

“What kind of society is it that would not place the children’s fire at the very center of all institutions of power? Can you imagine the effect of healing on our society were we to do such an immensely courageous thing.” The silence continued and the conference closed and people went home.

And about nine months ago, I got an email from one of the people who sat in the rows of the seats. It was a woman and she was the chief executive of a business there. And she typed in and she said, “I have done it. It was very difficult, but I have done it. I have brought the board of directors together. I told them about the children’s fire. I insisted that we brought our business plan together and that we matched that against the children’s fire and that we would change our business if it was necessary and we had a big raul, but we got through it and we did it and I wanted you to know.”

You know, ladies and gentleman, I believe that at this time we sit with this question. Edgar Shine, who is a thinker, exploring organization culture, has described this phenomenon of unconscious basic assumptions. We have a whole plethora of unconscious basic assumptions which underwrite the way we conduct business, the way we lead now and we have to become conscious of those because, truthfully, I see no reason why we should allow any business to exist that does not seek first to honor the children’s fire, the communities in which it is based, and the profits and growth are the enablers that has allowed those first two things to be honored.

Until we set the children’s fire at the very center of all institutions of power, we will continue to see the destruction of our earth. But is this gloomy or sad? I don’t think so. It is just a call to the brave. It speaks to each single one of you and it speaks to me and it says, “Who are you? Are you brave? Have you the freedom of thought? Have you the determination to step forward and say, ‘I will be proud of my life, when the day comes that I stand in front of my grave and the hole is being dug and my feet are just right over the edge. When I get to that place and I look down the trail of my life, will I be proud?'”

The children’s fire is a gift from the indigenous elders of many, many countries saying to us people, teachers, businessmen, church leaders, whoever you are: “You wield power. Honor that which is sacred in nature.”

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/childrens-fire-cultures-missing-ancient-core-value/feed/0Earthrise – A New Documentary Coming Earth Day 2018http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/#respondMon, 29 Jan 2018 18:47:35 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=21012About The Film Earthrise the film tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful […]

About The Film

Earthrise the film tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.

About Earthrise/The Blue Marble

When the first NASA photos were circulated, the image of the earth suspended in vast, black space was dubbed The Blue Marble. Kindred’s editor, Lisa Reagan, has shared in her writing and presentations for years the importance of understanding this moment in human history and how it influenced the consciousness-raising movement that became the sustainable living movement, spawned the first Earth Day celebration, and inspired the Conscious Parenting Movement. Here is an excerpt from her article Our Conscious Journey, an overview of astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s experience in space that led to the founding of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, IONS. Mitchell’s profound shift in consciousness to a more whole, integrated awareness after witnessing earthrise, also called the Blue Marble in photos, inspired forty years of human consciousness research that is still ongoing.

Watch Lisa Reagan’s New Story presentation here to see the full tragectory and unfolding of this New Story of Childhood, Parenthood and the Human Family that Kindred is dedicated to exploring and sharing.

The Epiphany

Moon dust floated throughout the command module as the Apollo 14 astronauts piloted the spacecraft into a slow spin, exposing all sides of the Kitty Hawk to the sun’s rays and pointing its five rotating windows toward a luminous, blue-and white planet. Settling in for the three-day flight home, Captain Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, shifted his thoughts toward the expansive view outside the spacecraft and reflected on the lunar mission’s accomplishments.

“This wasn’t the achievement of an individual, a space agency, or even a country,” Mitchell wrote in his autobiography, The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds. “This was, rather, the achievement of our species, our civilization. Life had come a long way since it first sprang from the Earth’s rock and water.”

What happened next, when the veil of moon dust settled in the cabin as the command module hurtled through the heavens at 36,300 feet per second, would catapult Mitchell into a previously unimaginable frontier of scientific exploration: human consciousness.

“What I experienced during that three-day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness. I actually felt what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me. And there was a sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental, but that there was an intelligent process at work. I perceived the universe as in some way conscious,” wrote Mitchell.

By the time the red-and-white parachute safely splashlanded the Kitty Hawk in the Pacific Ocean, Mitchell’s life had been transformed into a game of pick-up sticks. “Within a few days my beliefs about life were thrown into the air and scattered about,” he wrote. “It took me 20 years to pick up the sticks and make some kind of sense of it all.”

The undeniable wholeness of the earth dangling in infinite space entered into the world’s psyche in the nowfamous photos entitled “The Blue Marble” and “Earthrise.” In Earthrise: How Man First Saw The Earth, British historian Robert Poole writes that NASA was unprepared for the paradoxical reaction the photos of earthrise provoked. “Rather than turning people’s eyes on a future in space, it refocused them on Earth…. Fifteen months later came the first Earth Day and the start of an ‘eco-renaissance’ devoted to preserving and protecting ‘Spaceship Earth.’”

While many of Apollo’s astronauts reported deeply spiritual experiences upon seeing their home planet from outer space, it was Mitchell who followed through on his earthrise epiphany with a commitment to investigate his insight of wholeness and consciousness by leaving NASA and its astro-futurist vision in 1972 for the unchartered frontier of inner space. In 1973, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, IONS: a new era’s mission control for inner space exploration. “Noetic,” from the Greek nous, means “inner wisdom, direct knowing, or subjective understanding.”

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/earthrise-new-documentary-coming-earth-day-2018/feed/0The Fourth Wave Of Feminism: Meet The Pink Pussy Hathttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/fourth-wave-feminism-meet-pink-pussy-hat/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/fourth-wave-feminism-meet-pink-pussy-hat/#respondSun, 21 Jan 2018 03:05:13 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20965And this leads me to the last important part of the PINK PUSSY HAT as a symbol of the new wave of feminism: the hat itself. Hats are very practical. They provide warmth in the cold and a shield in the heat. The PINK PUSSY HAT was designed to provide warmth to the masses of […]

And this leads me to the last important part of the PINK PUSSY HAT as a symbol of the new wave of feminism: the hat itself. Hats are very practical. They provide warmth in the cold and a shield in the heat. The PINK PUSSY HAT was designed to provide warmth to the masses of women who took to the streets in the cold January weather, and they were beautiful. Most were made lovingly by hand — many in small groups of women gathering together to create. Knitting, crocheting and the #MeToo movement are central to the new wave of feminism. Women are re-claiming their feminine voice and ways: nurturing, caring, love, relationships, birth, breastfeeding, sewing, cooking, and homemaking, are all becoming important again to women and humanity. WE are creating a world where feminine values and ways are not seen as weak or to be dismissed. The feminine is in fact strong and a force for change and healing in a world desperately in need of all we represent.

Today, January 20, from the podium at the 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles, Rob Reiner loudly proclaimed to a sea of PINK PUSSY HATS, “We were all here a year ago for many different reasons, but one of the unifying reasons was we were scared. We were scared of who was going to enter the White House. A year has gone by, and he has corroborated every one of our fears. And we cannot white wash this anymore. We have a racist in the White House. We have a sexist in the White House. We have a pathological liar in the White House. And he is tearing away at the fabric of our democracy. And when we all came together last time, we had the power. And it’s the women; the women have given us the power. And the women continue to give us the power.”

Make no mistake, the women are back and they are wearing the symbol of their POWER on their heads.

Could the PINK PUSSY HAT be the symbol of the next wave of Feminism? In 2013, the Guardian proclaimed that “the women’s movement may have been in hiding, but the women have come back with a vengeance; introducing the new feminists taking the struggle to the web – and the streets.” The National Organization for Women, who spearheaded second wave feminism, celebrated its 50th anniversary in the summer of 2016, commemorating five decades of grassroots activism. But to what end? What does the future of feminism look like fifty years later? The 2017 and 2018 Women’s Marches were great example of new waves energy and power, and the wave looked like a sea of PINK PUSSY HATS across America and the world.

According to the organizers, the planned protest of the Women’s March on Washington was meant to “send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office and to the world that women’s rights are human rights”. The Washington March drew 440,000 to 500,000 people. Between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people participated in the Women’s March in the United States. In total, worldwide participation has been estimated at over five million. At least 408 marches were reported to have been planned in the U.S. and 168 in 81 other countries.

After the marches, officials who organized them reported that 673 marches took place worldwide, on all seven continents, including 29 in Canada, 20 in Mexico, and one in Antarctica. In Washington, D.C., alone, the march was the largest single political demonstration since the anti–Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s.The Women’s March crowds were peaceful, and no arrests were made in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle, where an estimated combined total of two million people marched. The energy and power of this march was felt around the world.

Jennifer Lawless, co-author of the book, Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era, said the Women’s March helped generate “widespread activism to push back against Donald Trump’s agenda. And it made women who ordinarily wouldn’t participate in politics, or do much more than vote during a general election, become politically activated.” And they all wore PINK PUSSY HATS, some made by their daughters, grandmothers, and sister, some sold on Etsy. They were handmade and in every shade of PINK. These hates represented something universally feminine and POWERFUL.

Sexual Predators, God In The Sky, And The Rape Of Mother Nature, insights on the #MeToo Movement

Why is the PINK PUSSY HAT so powerful? First let’s look at the color PINK. The meaning of the color pink is unconditional love and nurturing. A combination of red and white, pink contains the need for action of red, helping it to achieve the potential for success and insight offered by white. It is the passion and power of red softened with the purity, openness and completeness of white. The deeper the pink, the more passion and energy it exhibits. Pink is feminine and romantic, affectionate and intimate, thoughtful and caring. It tones down the physical passion of red replacing it with a gentle loving energy. The energy of the feminine, nurturing, encouraging, caring and compassionate, all qualities missing from our dominate, competitive, and brutal culture. These are the qualities the feminine brings and the exact qualities missing in human society now.

However, some misguided people feel that PINK is somehow wimpy and not to be taken seriously. I actually received this comment on my Facebook from someone who didn’t think the hats were a good idea. “Psychological studies confirm pink is associated with female, weakness, silliness and shallowness. To miss the subliminal message is to deny reality. Like pink if you choose, but its poor messaging if you wish to be taken seriously.” REALLY!!! I think reality is the best judges of what is… and trust me, in 2017 WOMEN were taken more seriously than ever. In fact, the Washington Post proclaimed 2017: “The Unexpected (and inspiring) Year of the Woman”. The Huffington Post, posed the question “Why 2017 Will Be The Year Of Women”? And by the end of 2017, a seismic change in American culture began toppling dozens of sexual predators in the #MeToo movement.

So this leads us to the next part of the POWERFUL, “PINK PUSSY HAT”… the pussy. Just what does it mean when women choose to put the symbol of their sexuality, their very identity as women on their heads? Prompted by the nasty comment of our new president who was quoted in 2005 saying, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” In response to this outlandish display of disrespect for women “the pussy hat” was created as a symbol of our pride and ownership of our own anatomy.

FEMALES are not weak; show me one MAN who can create LIFE in his body! EVERYTHING about a woman is STRONG. I for one am not willing to give away my power to emulate MEN. I think we lost it when we all identified with the oppressor and put on pant suits to try to compete! TRUE feminism is the celebration of ALL things FEMININE and what is more feminine than our sexual anatomy? In fact it is exactly what differentiates us from men. UNITED WE STAND, or Margaret Mead’s so eloquently said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

PINK+PUSSY=POWER… stand firm in your beauty and power as WOMEN.

Yes, you can buy your own pink, pussy hat online!

However, some people have a different feeling about the power of the pussy. I had this posted on my Facebook in defiance of the power of the PINK PUSSY HAT, “The Pink P*ssy Hat reinforces the notion that woman = vagina and vagina = woman, and both of these are incorrect. Really, vagina=women is incorrect? Then what does a woman equal?

HER ability to create human life is one of HER greatest powers differentiating HER from all MEN who cannot. If women really understood and owned the tremendous power of the PUSSY they would be able to step into their rightful place as creators of humanity and the mother of ALL men. This is real POWER.

The Pensacola Women’s March organizers actually went so far as to suggest that, “the Pink P*ssy Hat is white-focused and Eurocentric in that it assumes that all vaginas are pink; this is also an incorrect assertion.” Wow… I am a midwife of 40 years and I can tell you absolutely that ALL vaginas are PINK. And most labia’s are PINK too… even Black, Latina, and Asian pussy is PINK.

This group went on to suggest that, “this idea (the PINK PUSSY HAT) was a knee-jerk reaction to the heinous, sexist, misogynistic Trump administration, but it is also just that: a knee-jerk reaction, not fully thought out. Therefore, we ask that march goers refrain from wearing this hat and instead, pick an alternative headwear that focuses on collective women’s liberation for ALL women: transgender women, multinational women, disabled women, queer women — the most marginalized. It is only through the centering and leadership of these groups that women will be liberated — not through exclusionary white feminism, which the Pink P*ssy Hat is indicative of.” Thankfully most march goes did not heed this misguided notion and 2018 saw another sea of Pink Pussy Hats.

As most women know, the struggle for personhood, equality and respect has been long and hard. Even before the notion of feminism was born, women had been fighting to have the rights of personhood, to own property and to have a voice and a will in a world dominated by men. What has become known as the first-wave campaign secured the votes for women, which reached its height 100 years ago. The second wave women’s liberation movement that blazed through the 1970s and 80s, focused on sexual and economic equality. The third wave, declared by Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker’s daughter, and others in the early 1990s, brought a shift from second to third wave took many important forms, but often felt broadly generational, with women defining their work as distinct from their mothers.

What’s happening now feels like something new again. It’s defined by technology: tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online. The fourth wave feminism is defined by pragmatism, inclusion and humor. It is really down-to-earth, really open; it’s very much about people saying, “Here is something that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought women were equal. I’m going to do something about it.”

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PINK is very POWERFUL…. own it…. I for one refuse to agree that the FEMININE is not powerful…all things feminine are powerful… Including OUR SEX, OUR ability to CREATE ALL LIFE… OUR nurturing ways, our unity, our gentleness, and our BEAUTY.

And this leads me to the last important part of the PINK PUSSY HAT as a symbol of the new wave of feminism: the hat itself. Hats are very practical. They provide warmth in the cold and a shield in the heat. The PINK PUSSY HAT was designed to provide warmth to the masses of women who took to the streets in the cold January weather, and they were beautiful. Most were made lovingly by hand — many in small groups of women gathering together to create. Knitting, crocheting and the #MeToo movement are central to the new wave of feminism. Women are re-claiming their feminine voice and ways: nurturing, caring, love, relationships, birth, breastfeeding, sewing, cooking, and homemaking, are all becoming important again to women and humanity. WE are creating a world where feminine values and ways are not seen as weak or to be dismissed. The feminine is in fact strong and a force for change and healing in a world desperately in need of all we represent.

In conclusion, the noted anthropologist Margret Mead, after a lifetime of observing very diverse cultures around the world, observed, “Being allowed to live life in an atmosphere of religious freedom, having a voice in the government you support with your taxes, living free of lifelong enslavement by another person. These beliefs about how life should and must be lived were once considered outlandish by many. But these beliefs were fervently held by visionaries whose steadfast work brought about changed minds and attitudes. Now these beliefs are commonly shared across U.S. society.”

As Rob Reiner said at this year’s Women’s March, “ it’s the women; the women who have given us the power. And the women continue to give us the power.”

Remember to “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

]]>http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/fourth-wave-feminism-meet-pink-pussy-hat/feed/0The Neurophysiology Of Spiritual Guidancehttp://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/neurophysiology-spiritual-guidance/
http://kindredmedia.org/2018/01/neurophysiology-spiritual-guidance/#respondSat, 20 Jan 2018 20:21:05 +0000http://kindredmedia.org/?p=20937Stephanie shares her personal investigations and clinical research into how the brain networks experiences of spiritual guidance alongside her understanding of the neurophysiology of receiving and transmitting it. Clear guidance is differentiated from intuition or occasional psychic hunches. It is an integrated, holistic neuro-chemical phenomenon that forever transforms the individual who experiences it, recalibrating their nervous system. […]

]]>See Stephanie Mines at the Climate Change and Consciousness: Our Legacy for the Earth!

Stephanie shares her personal investigations and clinical research into how the brain networks experiences of spiritual guidance alongside her understanding of the neurophysiology of receiving and transmitting it. Clear guidance is differentiated from intuition or occasional psychic hunches. It is an integrated, holistic neuro-chemical phenomenon that forever transforms the individual who experiences it, recalibrating their nervous system.